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My attempt to move from Southern California and create a happy and sustainable urban homestead in North Dakota, with some musings on life with deaf dogs, a gluten free spouse, and the occasional mischievous garden gnome. Thank you for visiting and I hope you enjoy.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Flood Walls Are Up

The city crews came by Monday and erected the flood walls at the entrance to Riverside Park, just a couple of blocks from our house. The flood wall is a pretty impressive engineering feat, especially when you consider that they put it up in one day.

The wall is a series of metal panels that are slid in place in a large vertical groove on either side of the yellow flood wall. The panels are supported with vertical beams then braced with diagonal arms and sandbagged along the ground to hold them in place.

They also park a huge dump truck in front of the flood wall to prevent accidental bad drivers? Evil-doers? Just in case? It's hard to tell, but since the dump truck probably isn't needed for anything else, it's probably a good place to leave it here.

The National Weather Service issued its first Flood Warning of the year yesterday for Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. The current river level is right at minor flood stage of 28 feet and is forecast for 29 feet plus by next Wednesday (the cataclysmic flood of 1997 was 54 feet, and the current dike system protects to like 60 feet). With the first flood warning we officially enter flood season which should last for the next three to four weeks. On the one hand flooding = bad, but on the other hand flooding = spring.

Technically you're not supposed to be on the dike walls once the water gets high. But around the other end of the park there's a walking path that leads to the top of and along the dike wall, and I usually stroll up there once or twice and surreptitiously snap some photos. I took some photos last year but never got around to posting them. Maybe I'll post last years and this years photos so people can see the different water levels.

The park (on the other side of the wall) usually floods in really bad years. Last year was a pretty bad year and the water came up just to the other side of the flood wall, maybe a foot deep. They're expecting the same this year. I'll try to get some good pictures for everyone.

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All words and pictures on the blog are mine and the property of ME, please do not use them without my permission. If you ask (a simple e-mail is all), I'm more than likely to grant permission, but if you don't ask, well that'll make me grumpy.